With Every Breath

by Beverly Bird

  Maddie looked down at the jeans and the old sweater she wore beneath the afghan she had wrapped around herself again. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she wasn’t going at all. She couldn’t. But then something stopped her.

  Leslie Mendehlson had warned her not to coddle Josh. Which was precisely what she would be doing if she stayed home with him. As long as you don’t talk, honey, Mommy will stay right here and give you all her attention.

  That wasn’t good, she thought. No, that couldn’t be good at all.

  It was just that she didn’t want to go. Not only because of Josh’s silence . . . but because of Rick. Because she was so very reluctant—scared—to let Josh out of her sight again.

  Well, she thought, that wasn’t good either. It was at least mildly irrational. They had traveled the length of the entire country for the luxury of living without fear. Without paranoia. Even the cops thought Rick was in Nassau. And God knew he wouldn’t think to look for them in a place she barely remembered.

  "I don’t know," she said on a confused rush of breath. Doe Carlson had reached the deck and was huffing and puffing her way up the steps. "Let me talk to Josh," she went on.

  She left them standing on the porch. She found Josh in his room with the kitten. She opened her mouth to ask him if he would mind if she went out for an hour or so, then she deliberately changed course.

  "I’m going out for a little while. Mrs. Carlson will stay with you." She looked at her watch. It was barely five o’clock. "Until seven. Mrs. Carlson is the woman we got your kitten from," she reminded him.

  She waited pointedly for some kind of a response. Josh stared at her seriously. Ask me to stay home. If he did that, oh, yes, she would definitely reward him. But of course he didn’t answer. In fact, he turned back to No-Name, as though he didn’t care if she stayed or went.

  Maddie went thoughtfully back to the porch. Doe Carlson was ensconced in the rocking chair. Gina grinned at her expectantly. She needed to do this, Maddie thought, for a lot of reasons, for herself and for Josh. It was time to start putting the fear behind both of them.

  "There’s just one thing," she said reluctantly. "I’m having some problems with Josh’s father. I doubt very seriously if he has any idea that I’m here. In fact, if I believed that for a moment, I wouldn’t go. But..." She looked at Doe. "Please, if anyone comes to the door that you don’t know, call me immediately. And call the police." Raise the alarm, she thought. Call anybody and everybody. Seal off the island. She realized there was some small comfort in knowing that she’d be a maximum of four miles away, and Rick couldn’t escape the island unless the ferry carried him.

  Doe Carlson nodded comfortingly. "I won’t allow anyone in the house."

  As though, if Rick wanted to come in, Doe could stop him, Maddie thought. Then she took in the woman’s size again. She probably could, she realized, at least for as long as it would take the cops to come the short distance to The Wick.

  Her stomach rolled. She was being ridiculous. Paranoid. None of that was going to happen.

  She left them in the living room to shower and change.

  She put on a minimum of makeup—even if she was inclined to, she couldn’t compete with Gina Gallen. She slipped into jeans and an oversized sweater, added a gold chain and some earrings, and went back to the living room.

  Doe Carlson beamed at her. She was on the sofa with the kitten on her enormous lap and Josh snuggled contentedly by her side. She did have a way with life’s weaklings and wounded, Maddie thought.

  Gina was pacing impatiently. For all the interest she had shown in Josh the other day, the boy might not even be in the room. Obviously, she’d had her curiosity assuaged.

  Angus was on the front porch.

  Maddie saw him just outside the bay window as she shrugged into her coat. She kissed Josh good-bye and urged Doe again to call everyone and anyone if anything even slightly unusual happened. Gina went merrily outside, breezing past Angus without a word, but Maddie paused beside him.

  He stared steadily in the window at Josh and Doe Carlson. "Hello, hello."

  "I’m going out for a little while, Angus."

  "Yes."

  "Mrs. Carlson is going to stay with Josh. Do you know her?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I think Josh will be safe enough with her, don’t you?"

  Angus hesitated, then nodded hard. "I heard what you said."

  "What?" Maddie scowled. Gina leaned on the horn. She shot her an impatient look.

  "About your boy’s father," Angus said.

  Where had he been? Maddie wondered wildly, looking around at the dunes. Lurking in the reeds, listening? It gave her a spooked feeling.

  "I’ll stay, too," he went on. "Right here. I’ll stay until you come back."

  "That’s not necessary."

  Either he didn’t hear her, or he didn’t want to acknowledge that. And Maddie found herself thinking that if Rick would have a hard time getting past a protective Doe, then it would be nearly impossible for him to overcome both Doe and Angus.

  She had to stop this, she thought. Rick wasn’t coming. "I’ll wait right here," Angus insisted, "until everything is safe again."

  He sat down deliberately in the rocker, his arms crossed over his chest. She wondered what Doe Carlson would think about this, and realized that the woman had to know Angus’s foibles as well as anyone. Then she noticed that Angus didn’t have a coat. He’d freeze when the sun went down.

  She went back inside and brought him the afghan. "Here, you might get cold."

  His big, rubbery lips spread into a wide smile. He nodded again and took it, laying it neatly over his lap. "Right here. I’ll stay right here. No one will go inside." "Thanks, Angus."

  "Don’t drink the liquor!" he called out when she had reached Gina’s car.

  Maddie looked back at him. "It’s okay, Angus. I’m not driving."

  But he was still clearly thinking about demon rum when Gina darted the little sports car back down the driveway. Maddie glanced back at him one last time as Gina floored the accelerator on The Wick Road, then she shook her head.

  What a crowd.

  Chapter 7

  Before they even reached the bridge, Maddie realized that Gina had already been drinking. It didn’t affect her driving—assuming, of course, that the woman always drove fast. It didn’t show in her speech or in her mannerisms. But Maddie could smell it in the close confines of the small car.

  Gina chattered. "This place is so popular Tony doesn’t even close down on Christmas if it happens to fall on a Friday."

  "Tony as in Macari? The guy who owns my house?" "One and the same. Slowly but surely, he’s buying up Candle Island—but mostly The Wick."

  Despite Gina’s warning—or promise, depending upon how you looked at it—Maddie was still surprised when they turned onto the street where the Sandbar was. They had to park almost a block away. Cars lined both shoulders, and they invaded every possible private driveway. The parking lot was overflowing.

  Although the bar itself was large, it looked packed as well. People spilled outside through the doors. Maddie wondered if there was a fire code, then she figured that the fire department was probably there anyway.

  Men lounged against a group of pickup trucks in the parking lot. A group of women sat on a fallow concrete planter. The Sandbar was T-shaped, with the long side jutting out onto the beach. The bar inside ran down the long center, and opened up onto an outdoor deck over the sand.

  Even in the cold, biting wind, there were people out there. They were crowded three-deep at the bar, and even more sat at the tables and played billiards in the back, at the short section of the T.

  "What do you want to drink?" Gina yelled over the noise. "I’ll buy the first round, then you can get the second."

  Maddie nodded. "Vodka and tonic!" she shouted back.

  "Shots are only a dollar!"

  Maddie surprised herself by laughing. She hadn’t done shots since she was in college. Then she so
bered. Her memory was apparently bad enough without drinking too much.

  She shook her head.

  An old rock and roll song started throbbing from the jukebox. Gina went to the bar, and Maddie pressed back against the windows that ran along one wall. She saw every single person she had met on Candle Island so far, with the exception of Doe Carlson and Angus, and she knew where they were. Leslie Mendehlson was with a group of white-collar types at the tables, Karen Eagan included. There was the guy from the ferry. Cassie Diehl was playing pool in a very short, very bright green miniskirt that contrasted with her hair like a Christmas tree. Even the dour-faced woman who was her mother sat at the bar.

  Joe Gallen played pool.

  "Here you go."

  Maddie jumped as Gina handed her her drink. She watched the woman down a shot before Gina turned her attention to her other drink. Maddie let out a breath.

  Gina proceeded to the back of the bar, her hips swinging gently but almost with a hint of purpose. Maddie followed her. To her surprise, Gina headed directly toward the pool tables. Maddie thought dryly that that wasn’t necessarily where she would have gone if her ex-husband was playing pool.

  Gina stopped beside the first table, the one Cassie Diehl was playing at. Maddie broke stride several paces away.

  Oh, no, she thought. No way. She hadn’t liked Cassie from the first. She didn’t even want to ask her why she had put her in her own house. She didn’t want anything to do with her.

  And it was too late.

  "Look what the cat dragged in." Cassie said loudly, settling one skinny hip on the edge of the table to make a shot.

  "Meow." Gina laughed.

  Two tables down, Joe Gallen looked up.

  He caught Maddie’s gaze. His own was steady. It stayed on her long enough to suspend her breath, then it flicked to Gina, and he looked back down at the table.

  "Hey, Joe!" Gina called out.

  "Don’t start, Gina." His voice was tight enough to make Maddie’s own nerves pull taut.

  Maddie saw him miss his next shot. He retreated to the wall behind the pool table and picked up a bottle of beer on a little shelf there, swigging as though he needed to, not looking in their direction again.

  She wasn’t sure what he was worried about Gina

  starting, but her drinking might be one place to look. Maddie realized that the woman had already finished her first drink—at least her first on this trip to the Sandbar—and then Gina realized it as well.

  She thrust her glass at her. "You were buying the next round, right?"

  "I don’t think ..." Maddie began.

  "I didn’t ask you to think. You said you’d buy the next round, right? So get me another shot, too. What are you trying to do, chintz out on me?"

  Coming to the Sandbar, Maddie thought, had been a very poor idea.

  Suddenly she wanted to be home with Josh so badly her throat tightened again. She caught Leslie Mendehlson’s gaze. Leslie shrugged.

  Well, Maddie thought, I’m sure as hell not driving home with her. She took off her coat, feeling suddenly, uncomfortably hot. She left it on the back of a chair and took Gina’s glass to the bar.

  She was behind at least three other people, but the bartender looked over their heads at her. Maddie stood on her toes and stretched to hand Gina’s glass over. "Want another vodka-tonic yourself?" he asked. Maddie sighed and nodded. It would be a while before anyone else was ready to leave and she could get a lift home. She turned around again and Gina was right behind her, waiting to take hers out of her hand.

  "Sorry," Gina said contritely. "I didn’t mean to get snappy with you."

  Maddie was starting to feel claustrophobic from the smoke and too many bodies. "No problem."

  "It just makes me crazy to see him," she went on as they walked back to Cassie’s pool table. "Was it that way with your ex-husband?"

  Maddie knew suddenly that she didn’t want Gina

  Gallen to know anything more about her troubles with Rick than she already did. "We didn’t live in a small town like this," she answered evasively. "I could avoid running into him." Except when he decided he was going to run into me, she mentally added.

  She leaned back against the wall behind the table, nursing her drink.

  "Well, you were lucky," Gina said, and Maddie realized that her voice was rising. "Because no matter where I go around here, the big, bad cop has to follow me. It’s a macho thing, isn’t it, Joe? When you were sniffing around Maddie, did you tell her how macho you are?"

  It seemed to Maddie that the whole bar went expectantly quiet. She looked grimly out the window, wondering if she was blushing.

  "You ought to leave her alone," Gina went on. "She’s a nice lady, Joe, and she’s already got a husband. He’s giving her trouble with her kid."

  Maddie considered crawling back inside the wall. Gina began moving toward Joe. Her hips swayed deliberately. Maddie realized she was holding her breath. She didn’t think she would have the guts to antagonize a man like Joe Gallen, then walk right up to him in quite that way.

  Then Gina swayed.

  It happened so fast that Maddie would have missed it if she blinked. Leslie Mendehlson came out of nowhere, catching Gina before she passed out. The psychologist lowered her into a chair. The bartender filled a glass of water. Maddie wondered if they were going to try to get her to drink it, or dash it in her face. She didn’t think either would do much good.

  "End of show, folks," the bartender called out equably. "Let me through."

  Maddie decided she wanted to go home. Immediately.

  She grabbed her coat, following a suddenly urgent instinct to get back to Josh. She got as far as the parking lot before she remembered she didn’t have a car. She turned shakily back to the bar to see if anyone else might possibly be leaving, then her nerves twisted all over again. Joe Gallen was standing near the door, watching her with those angry blue eyes.

  His face was still hard. When his smile came it was almost feral. It made a chill move down her spine.

  "I guess you need a ride."

  "I d-don’t. .." Maddie paused deliberately, steadying herself, getting her tongue under control.

  He was leaning one shoulder against the concrete abutment near the door. He pushed off it, slinging his jacket over his shoulders as he moved, punching his arms into the sleeves. He moved off into the parking lot.

  "Don’t worry. I can control my raging sexual impulses long enough to get you to The Wick."

  Suddenly she was angry. She wasn’t sure whom he was mocking, her or himself. But either way, she didn’t need this.

  "I didn’t believe her," she snapped, moving to catch up with him.

  "Maybe you should."

  He kept walking.

  She buttoned her coat. She realized almost distantly that her hands were trembling. She felt vaguely overwhelmed. Damn Gina, she thought. The entire bar knew about Rick now, and that equated to the entire island. She wondered how they could stand to air their dirty laundry that way.

  Joe was all the way across the parking lot to the Pathfinder. "Do you want a lift or don’t you?" he called back shortly.

  It wasn’t the miles, she told herself. It was the wind.

  It whipped her hair into her eyes, and she peeled it away, ducking her head into the gales, following him again. She just didn’t want to walk.

  He wasn’t much on manners. He got behind the wheel, unlocked her door from the inside, and then leaned to push it open.

  Maddie scrambled in fast, not entirely sure hew long he’d wait for her. But then he only started the engine and let it idle. He finally gave a rumbling sound that might have been laughter.

  "Welcome to Candle Island."

  "I’ve been here before."

  "Mmmm. We shouldn’t forget that." He was quiet a moment. "I’m not sniffing around you."

  "I didn’t think you were."

  He looked over at her. "Well... that’s good." "Thanks for the compliment."

  Something happened
to his face. Surprise showed, then he scowled. "I didn’t mean it that way. I just get tired of the games. I appreciate your honesty, that’s all." And you’re lying through your goddamned teeth, Joe said to himself. Not sniffing? Maybe he hadn’t been doing it yesterday—much—when he’d stopped by Leslie’s office and the library. Maybe that had been mostly professional. But when he’d looked up to realize that Maddie Brogan had come into the bar with Gina, the sight of her had poleaxed him.

  He had no business pulling out onto the boulevard with her in his truck. But she was already in it, and he was the chief of police, and there were a few things he’d like the chance to ask her. He put the Pathfinder into gear. He hit the boulevard.

  Maddie Brogan beat him to the draw.

  "I guess it was ugly," she said suddenly.

  Joe’s hands tightened on the wheel. "What?"

  "Your divorce."

  "You could say that."

  "She still loves you."

  "She doesn’t know what the hell love is." He let out a sound that might have been a growl, or it might have been a sigh. "It was a bad year," he heard himself go on. "For both of us. I left, then our little girl died."

  Maddie paled. "I’m sorry." Such stupid, stupid words, she thought. Would they have sufficed, would they have comforted, if Rick had taken Josh, if something had happened to him and she never saw her child again?

  No, she thought, not likely.

  "How?" she managed.

  She was going to hear about it anyway, he thought. She might as well hear the accurate version right from the horse’s mouth. "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome," he answered, biting off the words. "Gina was drunk that night. I guess we’ll always wonder what might have happened if she hadn’t been passed out. Maybe she would have . . . heard something. I don’t know. Some cry first, or . . . anyway, she thinks so, and she blames me." He made an ugly sound. "If I hadn’t left her, she wouldn’t have been drowning her troubles. Maybe she’s right."